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Abstract

Summary: The differential diagnosis between intracerebral necrotic tumors and cerebral abscesses is frequently impossible with conventional MR imaging. We report two cases of cerebral abscesses that showed high signal on diffusion-weighted echo planar imaging and a strongly reduced apparent diffusion coefficient. This appearance was not present in our cases of necrotic/cystic gliomas (eight cases) and necrotic metastases (two cases). We believe that diffusion-weighted MR imaging may be a diagnostic clue in cases of cerebral “ring-enhancing” masses.